what do the "new" writers and thinkers to-day actually teach? how do they interpret life and love?
we have, so far, considered rather the effects of "new" morality than the morality itself; and, to some extent, dwelt more upon the characteristics of modern fiction than on the thought it expounds.
it is now necessary to examine the actual teaching, or interpretation, of life and love.
the poison permeating literature and society seems to have its main origin in over-emphasis and a determination to reform by destruction.
a violent, but not altogether unjustified, reaction against our old moral rules and formul?, which laid undue stress on "appearances," has led to a passionate declaration that the first right and duty of every man or woman is to express himself or herself at all costs. the one sin now held unpardonable is [40]hypocrisy, or the insincere moulding of oneself by rule; falling in line, accepting any authority or tradition, any form of self-sacrifice. there is great confusion here between good and evil. we have already more than once explained that we of the older days frankly admit our mistake. we did conform over-much, fixed our ideals in a groove, and—with too anxious love—sought to guide and direct youth, rather than help and stimulate them to be their best selves.
but, if we laid too great stress on restraint, control, sacrifice, and mere orderliness; the new thinkers have, here again, missed the truth by their fiery haste. as the clear-sighted heroine of a recent novel has remarked, "it was a great and fine act to let yourself go—only no one said precisely where you went to."
their self is not a complete purposeful human being, of strong character and sustained courage, clear faith, and reasonable hope: certainly not of any charity whatsoever. the ego they would exalt is a mere riot of moods. they snatch at a moment's joy, utter a moment's emotion, act on a moment's thought. there is no idea of "finding" oneself before expressing oneself. every passing fancy, feverish excitement, sudden hate, is to be flung [41]out upon a bewildered world; above all to the confounding and wounding of steadier souls—the old, the middle-aged, or any that bear another's burden. such tempestuous demands on life are based on anger against parental preachments and on a curious lack of self-confidence. seeing the glory of youth's capacity for enthusiasm, they seem always afraid that it will fade and die unless encouraged perpetually to explode. they will not tolerate any idea of growth and strength through self-control, any appeal to the higher, deeper self, built up on loving service and kindness to one's fellow-men.
no theory of life ever produced such weak, formless, and utterly miserable human beings. they quickly cease to have any self to express. swayed in a thousand contrary directions by every idle mood, they become more absolutely slaves to chance encounter and a thoughtless word than one would have supposed possible to an intelligent man or woman, with any pride in self or any standard of honour. it should be obvious that such a perpetual series of unconsidered experiments in emotion must wear out all independent thought, all strength of will, all capacity for judgment.
miss sheila kaye smith does not teach this [42]ideal in joanna godden, but she exposes it with her usual grim sincerity. the heroine of that profound tragedy kills her lonely soul by a perpetual struggle to snatch happiness for herself. originally a strong woman, she goes on "blundering worse and worse," until "there she stood, nearly forty years old, her lover, her sister, her farm, her home, her good name, all lost."
a novel in which we can, however, clearly detect confusion between love and the quick, vicious, response to every sensuous impression, is the sleeping fire of w. e. b. henderson, described by its author as a tale of "the urge in woman . . . where the flesh, crying like an infant for food, is yet held back by scruples of a spirit that bows to circumstance, from fastening on the breast of personal choice."
here "the woman," viva barrington, is, again and again, described as "a human soul, innately decent and fine"; and yet she "suddenly kindled" at any man's mere touch. the young guardsman whom "considerable practice had enabled to use his fine eyes with much effect," declared "she could be no end o' fun, if she'd only let herself go." in fact, he took up a bet, "ten to one in quids," that he would kiss her before the last supper [43]dance; "a real live kiss, mind you, where she gives as good as she gets. none of your stolen pecks."
as this "splendid specimen of the vigorous young male smoothed back her hair, devouring her with his eyes . . . a delicious languor . . . as of one yielding to an an?sthetic . . . was stealing over her. husband, children—everything of her outside life slipped away."
and at his kiss "primordial passion" awoke. "feeling herself a live coal of shame from head to foot she raised herself slightly upwards towards him, and with closed eyes and utter abandon, passionately returned the pressure of his lips."
this "pure" woman, already a mother, is fired by a "vulgar wager," a vain boy wanting to kiss her "for the mere enjoyment of the contact," in the conservatory, heated by champagne and the dance. there is no attempt to suggest real feeling, the passionate awakening that may come after a foolish marriage; when the "right man" stirs unknown depths, beating down "fears, doubts, self-distrusts." she crumples up at the first chance shot.
no wonder that, after some months' experimenting among men, she grows "afraid—[44]afraid! . . . now i know i'm liable to—to kindle, suddenly, inexplicably. . . . there's a man here—one of those to-night. he's unclean, through and through. i never used to attract that type. and now apparently i do. the 'sleeping fire' . . . he sees it in me and tries to feed it. he sickens me! oh, i'm frightened. suppose one day that type ceased to sicken me. i've seen the demi-monde at the tables. their faces haunt me. they began with the sleeping fire, and men fed it and fed it till it became a furnace . . . for me, it's been like summer lightning so far . . . only summer lightning. look after me, help me, lest it ever be forked lightning . . . the lightning that can strike and destroy."
so she appeals to the husband she had originally accepted as "a crutch," and who had looked upon her as "furniture." fortunately—for the children, because he has "changed, broadened in outlook and understanding"—he is ready "to build afresh, stone by stone."
we admit that mr. henderson's moral is sound enough; he has, indeed, found "the way of salvation." but he has not drawn for us the "innately decent and fine woman." [45]viva is weak and abnormally sensual from the first; pulled out of the mire by luck, human kindness, and a dim taste for "the things that are good, decent, and worth while"; inherited from clean-living forebears.
the danger for her was exceptional, not "that natural yearning" against which "all women must be eternally on their guard." her husband, we notice, hoped to guard his daughter "against her mother's tendency."
we have a precisely similar situation in the mother of all living by mr. keable. an emotional, but high-minded woman, whose husband was not aggressively incompatible, is here suddenly stirred to the depths—practically at first sight—by a cynical, handsome man of the world. there is absolutely no attempt whatever to even suggest any natural affinity in mind or tastes between the two; no urge except the unexplained, and inexplicable, mystery of the spark that fires sex. the abandon to which this unnatural awakening leads up belongs to quite a different type of woman; and when, at the eleventh hour, she repents in melodrama, we have still a third personality, no way like the girl her husband wooed and won.
this is, perhaps, why mr. keable calls her [46]the mother of all living, eve incarnate, the world-woman. as mr. masefield draws mary queen of scots—too "big" for one lover. both writers chose to forget, or to ignore, that love has no meaning, unless one's whole self is expressed.
mr. temple thurston, again, in the green bough, seems resolutely determined to uphold pope's dictum that "every woman is at heart a rake."
mary, indeed, is a woman "whom life had discarded and thrown aside"; whom, therefore, we are ready to judge leniently. it does not, therefore, follow "how vast a degree of false modesty there is in the world . . . it had all been false that modesty which their mother had taught them."
she, at any rate without modesty, sought and found love. so fine a thing this that she took it, without hesitation, from a married man, who had told her how much he loved his wife. "it happened—in a fortnight."
of her sisters, reproaching her, she declares "jane thinks herself a true woman just because she's clung to modesty and chastity and a fierce reserve; but these things are only of true value when they're needed, and what man has needed them of us? who cares at all [47]whether we've been chaste or pure? none but ourselves! and what made us care but those false values that make jane's shame of me? . . . you're not really ashamed of me. you're envious, jealous, and you're stung with spite. calling me a servant girl or a woman of the streets only feeds your spite, it doesn't satisfy your heart. you'd give all you know to have what i have. . . . i'm going to have a child. . . . it's not a sin. it's not a shame. it's the most wonderful thing in the world."
there is one unanswerable reply to that fearful charge—"what man has needed chastity of us, who cares?"—a son's honouring of his mother, the man's instinct to defend his wife, his sister, or his child.
false, or forced, "modesty" may degenerate into "spite"; but it will be a sad day for human nature when all women are "jealous" of the "free!"
mr. thurston seems to claim, in this novel, to be "the one man in the world who understands the truth about women." this is his reading of truth!
it had been "the one night of her lover's life"; but he went back to that "wonderful woman," his wife, who had "as big a heart as all this stretch of acres and that breadth of [48]sea." to mary, he wrote, "i blame myself utterly and i blame myself alone. . . . so many another woman would have reckoned the cost before she knew the full account. you said nothing. you are wonderful, mary, and if any woman deserves to escape the consequences of passion, it is you."
"god!" she cried, "was that the little mind her own had met with? . . . she knew how in the deepest recesses of her soul there did not live a father to her child. . . . if this was a man, then men were nothing to women. two nights of burning passion he had been with her and for those moments they had been inseparably one. but now he had gone as though the whole world divided them. . . . with that letter he had cancelled all existence in the meaning of life. there was no meaning in him."
he was "the mere servant of nature, whipped with passion to her purpose . . . no father at all."
wherefore she tries to explain to him: "women are not complicated. it is only the laws that make us appear so. . . . that first of our two nights on the cliffs, did you find me complicated or difficult of understanding? i showed, as well as gave you myself, and [49]this is how you have treated that revelation. . . . why do you hint about shame to me? did you think i shared what you call your weakness? did you think for those moments that, as you say of yourself, i forgot or lost restraint? . . . you would not believe me if i told you that all women in their essence are the same. it is only with so many that . . . the hollow dignity of social position, the chimera of good repute . . . are more attractive and alluring than the pain and discomfort and difficulty of bringing children into a competitive world. . . . but starve one of these women . . . deny to her the first function which justifies her existence . . . and you will find her behave as i behaved. . . . i had no shame then. i loved. loving no longer, i still now have no shame because, and believe me it is not in anger, we have no cause to meet again."
on the other hand, miss e. m. delafield's humbug reveals with startling clearness the falseness of self-seeking in passion. her argument is the more convincing because her heroine, lily stellenthorpe, has the best of reasons for adopting the new ideal, the strongest possible temptation to follow a false light. her sensitive and vital nature [50]had been cramped from birth by "a good woman's capacity for the falsification of moral values." her father literally drove her along the same demoralizing groove. love and respect for their honest, but kind, goodness almost compel insincerity and the complete self-annihilation. under such influences, she acquires a good husband. he, alas, dictates her conscience, assumes that so sweet a woman will conform to type. it seems almost a brutal sin for her to act, think, or even feel, for herself. steadily she grows more hidden, secret, and hypocritical.
this careful preparation for modern self-passion is admirably drawn. we can scarcely deny that any sudden outburst of even cruel selfishness or revolt might be excused, if not absolutely justified, for her.
inevitably the occasion comes. the expected lover appears, young, ardent, understanding; all, it seems to her revived free impulse, that she had been seeking for many years. lily, however, does not snatch at happiness, flare out herself. she looks into herself, getting herself—as it were—in order, before so fateful a choice.
she thought first, as she had been told by a sympathetic schoolmistress, "what i need, [51]what i must have, if i am ever to fulfil myself—is romance. i must learn not to be afraid of life. some day, i shall love. am i to pretend to myself that such a thing is out of the question because i am married?" why not strike for freedom, and begin life again? she "thought that the conflict lay, as so often, between sincerity and sentiment." only sentiment made it "impossible for her to be ruthless" to her husband.
"then illumination came to her, searing and vivid."
the lover was, after all, a mere "pretext," an opportunity for one more experiment with life, one more feverish attempt to find some false image of herself.
"was the freedom for which she looked to be based upon yet another artificial value? after all, why should she arrogate to herself the right of deciding what her greatest happiness was to be? . . . the long, long way round that it had been, to arrive at last at her own convictions, and cease to try and wrench them into line with those of other people!"
"the gift" of herself "had been made" to her husband. her real self lay with him and with their coming child.
[52]so she conquered the final test, escaped "applying a general law to a particular case—taking one's values ready-made—the old, old humbug." as "the last comforting falsity fell from her she saw . . . the truth."
this was the truth for her. it is not offered as an argument for or against a dogmatic rule that no woman may ever be justified in leaving her husband.
what this thoroughly modern and sincere novel does establish, is the equal folly, and almost greater moral danger, of the opposite dogma: that self-expression for its own sake, the mere putting a moment's apparent happiness above all other claims or aims, without considering the future, or seeking to find one's real self, is a false and evil ideal.
miss delafield gives the "new" morality a fair, and even an eloquent, hearing, chooses a case where all the circumstances seem combined for its support, and then exposes the fallacy of its reasoning.
